Prices from Illegal Timber in Cambodia

According to environmental officials in Cambodia, loggers and traders are able to make thousands of dollars through illegal logging activities in the country.

Villagers in forest areas cut down trees and sell it to illegal traders who pay up to $1,500 per cubic meter of rosewood. The trader than brings the rosewood to the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, and sell it for $5,000. The wood to then smuggled into Vietnam and eventually into China, where an unprocessed cubic meter of rosewood can be sold to manufactures for $50,000.

Between 1990 and 2010, around 2.8 million hectares of forest was lost to logging in Cambodia.